Chapters (41)
- TITLE PAGE
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- PART TWO
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- PART THREE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- EPILOGUE
- ALSO BY ELLA FIELDS
He sighed, accepting that I wasn’t going to let this go. “Why do you think, Astrantia?” He reached for a grape, causing the prongs to dig deeper into his skin. “It was that or kill him.”
An amused voice sounded from the doors. “For he’d just been crowned king, and to surrender such a thing so soon to his bastard of a nephew would not do.”
THIRTY-TWO
Aster
Scythe leaned against the doorframe, his iron manacles hanging from one wrist and an apple in his other hand.
Rorn rounded the table. “Who set you loose, mutt?”
“The power you lack that I just so happen to possess, of course.” Scythe eyed the blood-tipped fork in my lowering hand and smirked. “Come to me, wildflower.”
“Move, and he dies, Astrantia.”
But Rorn wouldn’t take his anger and jealousy that far. For he now understood there was no surer way to lose me.
Done breathing the same air as the male I’d given too many chances to, I crossed the room to Scythe. He tossed the apple over his shoulder and took my hand. “Think quick, king,” he warned Rorn. “For if I need to take a crown I do not want just to get what I need, I will, and I’ll wear it with a shit-eating smile for the rest of my days.”
Scythe then warped us away from the towers.
We rematerialized in a field of demolished homes, the swaying wildflowers tickling my bare ankles. “Would you have told me?” I asked, tearing at the end of my robe with the fork. “That it was Rorn who maimed and banished you?”
Scythe watched me, unsheathing a claw. “Eventually.”
I dropped the fork and lifted the robe for him to slice the corner of it with ease, then I took his uninjured hand and led him to the creek at the field’s edge. He didn’t so much as wince while I washed the blood from his hand and carefully cleansed the punctures.
He stared with rapt focus. “You’ve done this before.”
“When I returned from that first week with you, I fell prey to it all. Too much time was spent merely perishing slowly.” I lifted his hand to my lap and gently wrapped it with the strip of silk from my robe. “After some months, I knew I had to do something to keep from losing the little sanity I had left. So I began doing what I could to help in the infirmary.”
“Eighteen months and ten days,” he said.
I smiled. Tucking the silk beneath his palm, I brought his hand to my mouth. “Eighteen months and ten days.”
His thumb brushed my lips. I kissed it, then squealed and smacked at his shoulder when he picked me up to place me in his lap. “Your hand.”